The Rescue
by Hellsleprechaun
Summary: After discovering that Silas has been impersonating Stefan and that Stefan is trapped at the bottom of the quarry, Damon and the others go to rescue him, but how will Stefan cope with the realisation that Silas had fooled his friends and family into thinking he was him and can he forgive them for not realising that he was gone?


**I do not own the vampire diaries, it belongs to L.J Smith and the CW.**

**This is set about two months after 4x23, I'm going on the assumption that Silas remains in Mystic Falls as Stefan and that it takes Damon, Elena and everyone else a while to realise that it wasn't Stefan and to rescue him. I have absolutely no idea how they're going to get rid of Silas or get him to tell them what he did with Stefan. I'm also assuming that Silas has some kind of plan going on, but I can't think of what it might be, however, the only reason I can think of for him getting rid of Stefan would be if he wanted to remain in Mystic Falls.**

When Stefan had arrived back at the Boarding house the day after he left, Damon and Elena had been surprised to say the least, slightly apprehensive but admittedly, a little glad also. Damon had been torn between his joy over getting the girl and the loss of his brother, of course he had known that Stefan wouldn't be exiting his life forever, but it was going to be a while before he saw him again and they had both known it, so when Stefan returned home and told them that there was a change of plan, neither of them had questioned it too extensively.

They had both noticed Stefan's behaviour was a bit... off, but that was hardly surprising considering the woman he loved now loved his brother and he was living with the two of them, what was surprising however was Stefan's lack of reaction to the whole thing. Damon knew that his brother was extremely stoic but this was impressive even for him. When he had asked her Elena admitted that she found it strange too, they weren't sure what they expected, certainly not Stefan crying or throwing tantrums but... something. They ignored it again however, and put it down to Stefan wanting them to be happy and not wanting to cause any problems for them; it may have been wishful thinking.

When they discovered that it was not Stefan but Silas whom they had been sharing their home with for the past two months, Damon felt his stomach drop. "What did you do to my brother?" He demanded furiously, he didn't care if Silas was thousands of years older and much stronger than himself, if Stefan was dead then Damon would kill him.

"Dead," Silas replied with a smile.

"You're lying!" Damon snarled, feeling his fangs descending, and his face twisting into something monstrous.

It had taken them a long time to break Silas, to get him to tell them what he had done to Stefan and afterwards the ancient immortal had fled, Damon didn't know or, for the moment, care- as long as he was gone.

Damon, Elena and Caroline had ran through Mystic Falls to get to the quarry where Silas claimed to have left Stefan in a box to desiccate, they had left the others behind at the house as they'd only slow them down.

When they reached the quarry, Damon was the first to dive into the freezing water, narrowly avoiding the sharp rocks at the bottom and beginning to search for Stefan. It was difficult, the water was not only cold, but dirty, and the dark night sky provided no help.

There was a loud splash and the water rippled around him, as Caroline jumped in after him and began to help him search. Every now and then they had to swim to the surface to take in a breath, granted they couldn't drown as a human could but they could still lose consciousness.

"Elena! Can you see anything?" He called out to his girlfriend, who stood at the top of the quarry looking down into the water, she shook her head.

"It's no use- it's too dark! I can't see anything." She replied, staring down into the water, desperately hoping to see something.

Damon and Caroline exchanged a look of silent agreement, took in deep breaths and went back under into the cool muddy water. Damon opened his eyes very slightly and could only just make out the bright blonde of Caroline's hair in front of him. They swam deeper, both trying to hold the breath in their burning lungs for as long as possible before resurfacing to suck in a desperate lungful of air.

It took them longer than any of them would have thought, the quarry was deeper, and wider than it appeared from above, but finally, Damon grasped something that definitely wasn't rock and definitely didn't belong at the bottom of the quarry. Caroline must have felt it to, for she grabbed onto one edge of it, and he the other and they started the slow ascent to the surface, careful not to drop the long, heavy safe and lose Stefan again.

As they resurfaced, Elena was waiting for them; she ran down to the water and waded in to help them carry the box to the shore. Although both Caroline and Damon were gasping hungrily for air they began to pull at the lock on the safe until finally, with a sharp creak, the door to the safe was wrenched open.

"Stefan!" Caroline cried, staring down at her friend in horror.

Stefan was emaciated, with the bones of his ribs clearly protruding and his wrist so skeletal Elena was sure her old human self could have snapped it like a twig. Thick, dark veins were visible beneath his pale thin skin and his green eyes were open, but dull and unfocused.

"Stefan, it's me Caroline- your friend, remember?" The blonde appealed to her best friend. "Damon's here too, and Elena, we came to get you. Did you really think we were going to leave you down there?" Caroline tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a sob. There was no reply from the man in front of her.

"We need to get him out of this box and back to the house. Damn it, we should have brought some blood!" Damon snapped irritably to nobody in particular, and neither girl said anything as they knew that this was the only way he really knew how to express concern for Stefan-by getting mad at the situation.

There was absolutely no question of Stefan walking, he couldn't even manage to speak, let alone stand up, so Caroline and Elena helped Damon to get him out of the water filled safe and Damon carried him the rest of the way back to the boarding house.

"Damon, I think we should slow down! You're probably hurting him." Caroline pointed out, gesturing at Stefan, for whom motion looked to be particularly painful.

"Well he's going to be in a lot more pain if he doesn't get any blood soon, isn't he Barbie?" Damon said rather scathingly, and Caroline fought the urge to roll her eyes only because she knew that Damon was just as worried as she was.

They carried on running, although Caroline noted at a slightly slower pace, until they reached the boarding house where all the lights were on downstairs and the others were waiting for them.

"Did you find him?" Tyler asked, rather redundantly considering that Damon was carrying Stefan into the house. The expression Damon aimed at him left him in no doubt that his question had not been appreciated. "I just got here, Matt explained what happened." He informed Caroline.

"That's great, wolf-boy, but nobody cares." Damon stated, clearly annoyed by Tyler's presence. "If you insist on being here then shut up and make yourself useful by going down to the cellar and getting some blood bags." He commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Tyler rolled his eyes but obeyed and was back within seconds, apparently this had not been fast enough for Damon, who snatched one of the bags out of his hand and glared at him, and Tyler distanced himself from the older Salvatore and sat down next to Matt on the other sofa.

Damon ripped the bag open savagely and held it to his brother's dry mouth, "come on, Stefan, drink." He coaxed gently as Stefan didn't respond to the blood immediately. Damon allowed a few drops to drip into his brother's mouth and Stefan gave in to his instincts. His bony hand reached up, faster than anyone had expected, and pulled the bag from Damon's grasp and he began to drain it dry noisily and messily, slopping blood all over his face and wet clothes as he did so.

"Ew," Matt commented, earning a reproaching glance from both Elena and Caroline.

"Maybe you guys should go home." Elena suggested not impolitely but, realising how it sounded, elaborated. "I just mean that I don't think Stefan would want everybody to see him like this and I don't think any of you want to be around if Damon's mood continues the way it's going."

Matt and Tyler both agreed and slipped from the room, "I'm staying," Caroline insisted. "Stefan's always been there for me, so I'm going to be there for him."

"I know, there's no point in telling you to leave," Elena smiled at her friend for the first time that night.

It was then just Damon, Stefan, Elena, Jeremy and Caroline left, since Elena had burned the Gilbert house down, she and Jeremy had been staying at the Salvatore Boarding house with the Salvatores, _with Damon and Silas, _Elena corrected herself, feeling idiotic. How had they not realised that they were living with Silas and that Stefan was in trouble?

"Slow down, Stefan." Damon instructed his brother quietly, holding his head up as he would a baby while Stefan drained bag after bag.

Damon breathed a small sigh of relief as he saw that Stefan looked less bony already and that some of the colour was flooding back into his skin.

When Stefan finished the last blood bag, he discarded it carelessly on the floor, which at any other time would have caused Damon great annoyance.

"Bonnie," Stefan whispered, his voice still slightly hoarse.

"What?" Damon looked confused, "no, it's me."

Caroline kneeled next to him on the couch and picked up Stefan's hand, "she's not here right now; she's spending the summer with her mom."

"No... dead." Stefan muttered before letting his eyes fall shut in a long, tired blink.

"No, Stefan, it's okay, she's not dead." Elena tried to reassure him, sharing a bewildered look with Caroline and Damon.

"No, he's right. Bonnie's dead." Jeremy spoke up reluctantly, he had wanted to tell everybody earlier but he had promised.

"What? What do you mean she's dead?" Elena demanded.

"She died the night she dropped the veil."

"But that's impossible! She graduated with us, we saw her, we talked to her."

"We could see and talk to the other ghosts too." Damon reminded them all quietly.

Elena seemed to be lost for words, so Jeremy continued, "she brought me back and she gave up her life for me. I wanted to tell you guys but she made me promise not to until later because you were all so happy."

After a long, pregnant pause Caroline spoke. "How did Stefan know?" she wondered aloud.

"Silas told me." Stefan spoke up; his voice smoother than it had been before. "He said so, before he... stabbed me... and he... put me in the safe." Stefan struggled to sit up, only to be pushed back down by Damon.

"Don't talk now, get some rest."

"You don't understand- he was me."

"We know, Stefan, he's been pretending to be you for the past few months." Elena informed him delicately.

"No- he is me, I'm him. Like you and Katherine." He attempted to explain sleepily.

"What-" Elena began, but was cut off by Damon.

"Let him sleep, he might make more sense when he wakes up."

A few hours later, Jeremy had finally got so tired that he excused himself to go to bed, Caroline had taken a shower in one of the rooms upstairs and was now wearing a clean shirt of Stefan's and a pair of sweat pants and had fallen asleep on one of the living room sofas, wrapped in a blanket. It was just Damon and Elena left awake. Stefan was lying across the sofa, with Damon and Elena seated in chairs nearby.

Damon hadn't spoken in hours and it was starting to bother Elena, normally he would have been whispering inappropriate jokes and she'd have to try not to smile, but this time he was completely quiet and sombre, it was beginning to unnerve her.

"Hey, you okay?" She asked softly, knowing as she said it that it was a stupid thing to ask, of course he wasn't okay, but she felt that she needed to say something.

"I'm fine, I just... I can't believe that we've been living with Silas for the past two months and none of us noticed."

"I know." She agreed, feeling a sickening wave of guilt start to build in the pit of her stomach as Bonnie's face came to the forefront of her mind. She wanted to say something, to find anything that would make this better, but her mind remained blank. She reached out and grasped Damon's hand tightly, and forced a smile in his direction when he squeezed back.

When Stefan woke up, he was startled by the light pouring in through the window and he sat up with a gasp and surveyed the room around him. He was lying on one of the couches in his living room, wearing the same, now filthy, clothes he had been in when Silas trapped him in the safe. On the sofa on the other side of the room was Caroline, sleeping, on the chairs beside his sofa were Damon and Elena, the latter of who was sleeping while Damon was awake and watching him.

"Hey," Damon greeted his brother, feeling like an idiot for not having anything better to say.

"Hey," Stefan replied, staring at him cautiously. Damon gazed at his brother in confusion, as his eyes flickered around the room, from the old Persian rug, to the paintings that had been on the walls for hundreds of years, to the fireplace.

"Anything I can help you with?" He inquired in an attempt to lighten the mood. It fell flat.

"I'm trying to decide if any of this is real." Stefan replied honestly, more honestly, Damon noted than he would have done before.

"You can relax, I'm really me, Elena's really her and Caroline's really her too. Caroline that is not Elena- last thing we need, another doppelganger running around." Damon rambled for a moment before managing to regain control of his mouth and shut himself up as he saw the colour drain from Stefan's face.

"I've got some bad news for you." Stefan said with a raise of his eyebrows, seemingly now believing that everybody in the room with him was who they appeared to be. "I'm Silas's doppelganger." He announced without preamble.

"What?"

"Silas showed me his true face and it was me." Stefan had had a lot of time to consider this, so he was now able to talk about it without shock colouring his tone or expressions.

"Stefan, he can take on anyone's face." Damon insisted, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of his brother and leaning forwards with intensity. "He appeared to Caroline as Klaus, as Matt, even as her mom. _He can look like anyone_."

Stefan glared at him with annoyance, "no, he told me that this was his real face. He put that immortality curse on himself and then nature, to restore the balance, created doppelgangers of him, versions of himself that could be killed- _shadow selves_." He quoted the ancient immortal.

"So... what? Is it like with the Petrova doppelgangers, one every five hundred years or so? Tatia, Katherine and then Elena, passed through the family? Does that mean we're related to Silas?"

"I don't know. I only know what he told me and, to be honest, I'm not sure that I want to know anymore than that."

"What's going on?" Caroline asked with a yawn, rubbing at her tired eyes gently while over on the armchair Elena began to stir.

"I'll fill you in while Stefan goes to have a shower since he stinks like, well, like the bottom of a quarry." Damon smirked up at his brother who rolled his eyes at the joke- he definitely knew that Damon was Damon.

As Stefan stepped out of his shower and into his bedroom, he stopped and allowed his gaze to wander across the room- it was not as he had left it. He could not put his finger on what it was, but he was filled with the unnerving sensation that something wasn't right. He walked swiftly over to his wardrobe and pulled the door open roughly and stared at the clothes inside. He stared in confusion for a few moments as he saw several items that he did not remember owning, three new shirts more expensive than any he would have selected, two new pairs of shoes and several new pairs of jeans. He threw on a pair of jeans that he knew were definitely his and an old shirt and headed downstairs.

"Did you buy me new clothes?" he demanded of his brother.

Damon, Elena, Caroline and Jeremy all turned to look at him with surprise.

"No, was I supposed to?"

"There are new clothes in my wardrobe, I can't remember buying them and I don't..." he trailed off- the new clothes, Elena saying that Silas had pretended to be him, why everybody suddenly seemed guilty and uncomfortable- it all clicked.

"He was staying here wasn't he, in this house, in my room?" His voice remained even and his expression shut down, leaving it impossible for the other people in the room to know what he was thinking.

"Stefan, we're sorry! It was just... he looked like you, walked like you, spoke like you." Elena spoke, approaching him and taking his hand. He pulled his hand out of hers gently but firmly, nodded once and left the room again.

Damon was sitting in the living room of his house a few days after Stefan's return home and for once it was just the two of them in the home, not that that was much different from being alone in the house since Stefan was staying upstairs and avoiding everybody.

Caroline had wanted to stay but Elena had convinced her to go home so that she could finally deal with Bonnie's death and Damon had suggested that Elena go too. He knew that both girls were worried about Stefan, but it was obvious that they were struggling to try and push aside their grief over the death of a girl they had known since birth.

He was half-way through reading the paper- not that there was any point as there was never any news in the Mystic Falls paper, anything interesting was kept from the members of the public who lived in ignorance of the supernatural- when he smelled something strange and screwed his nose up as he sniffed the air-smoke.

He ran up the stairs as fast as possible, convinced that something had gone horribly wrong, that they were being attacked or that Silas had returned.

"Stefan!" He shouted loudly, desperately, as he ran along the corridor towards his brother's room where the smell was emanating from. "Stefan!" He yelled again and came to a stop at the doorway of Stefan's cluttered bedroom. The room was on fire, the bed had been set alight along with the wardrobe and curtains and Stefan was stood in the centre of the room, watching it burn as the flames closed in around him.

Damon swore and sped into the room, grabbing Stefan roughly by his upper arm and hauling him out of the burning room and away from the smoke.

Fifteen minutes later, Damon had managed to put out the fire by using curtains from one of the guest rooms, and destroying them in the process, to smother the flames. He stormed furiously into the living room, where Stefan was standing waiting for him. Before Stefan could speak, Damon snapped. "What the hell is wrong with you?" He demanded, fighting back the powerful temptation to slap his brother.

When Stefan didn't reply, or even make any attempt to explain what he had done, Damon continued. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? Are you trying to burn our house down?" He could feel that he was glaring aggressively at Stefan but he couldn't bring himself to care, he couldn't believe that even Stefan would do something so moronic.

"I couldn't stay in that room anymore." Stefan admitted quietly.

"So you decided to burn it down? You couldn't just sleep in the guest room like you've been doing for the last few days?" Damon's tone was harsh and biting, and he did nothing to soften it. "You're being pretty selfish, you know. Everybody's been worried about you-"

"Including you?" Stefan cut him off bitterly.

"Yes." Damon answered, too angry to acknowledge that he was going to be embarrassed about that admission later. "We've all been worrying about you and all you do is avoid us all and refuse to speak to us when you deign to be in the same room as us! And now, you decide to burn our home down, nice work, Stef." He congratulated sarcastically.

"It doesn't feel like home anymore."

"What?" Damon was too startled to come up with any other response.

"This place, it doesn't feel like my home anymore- not after he was here, living in my house, wearing my clothes, sleeping in my bed."

Damon felt all of the anger drain out of him as he realised what should have been obvious to him since the beginning, that Stefan was not dealing with this as well as he had pretended. _Of course he isn't- who would be? If you'd been locked in a box underwater for two months while your doppelganger took your place, you wouldn't be dealing with it well either._

"Stefan, I-" he was cut off again.

"You want to talk about selfish? For _two months_ Bonnie has been dead and I've been missing, but you've all been so wrapped up in your own lives that you didn't even notice. When I was down there I thought that Silas must have left town like I was planning to, I thought that that could be the only possible explanation for why none of you had found me yet. Then, as time passed, I began to think that maybe Silas had stayed in town and was pretending to be me, and I thought that he must have killed you all- you, Elena, Caroline, because there was no way that he could pretend to be me and you wouldn't see straight through him. Apparently I was wrong." Stefan watched Damon steadily, unable to keep the disappointment and hurt off his face. "I can forgive Caroline and even Elena, but you're my brother, you've literally known e since the day I was born, I thought you'd be able to differentiate between me and Silas." Stefan hadn't raised his voice at all during his tirade, instead choosing to remain calm and simply state the facts and Damon thought that might have been worse.

"I'm sorry." He spoke past the lump in his throat, aware that his words were completely insignificant.

Stefan stared at him for a moment and shook his head, moving to push past him to the stairs. "I'm getting my stuff and then I'm leaving, I don't know when I'll be back."

"Wait." Damon grasped his arm and stopped him exiting the room, "you can't go. I'm not going to let you leave after you nearly burned the house down, who knows what you might try next?" Damon tried to joke then swallowed his pride with difficulty, "please don't go."

Stefan was so surprised by his older brother's words that he stopped completely and gaped at him.

"I wanted to say it the night you left to dump Silas's body but I just... couldn't get the words out. I don't want to lose my brother again- who else would I save from ridiculous situations when they decided to play the martyr, and who else would save me when my mouth gets me into trouble?" He grinned weakly.

Stefan ducked his head down so Damon wouldn't see that his eyes were filling with tears but Damon knew him too well and he felt his brother wrap his arms around him in a tight hug.

"I missed you." Stefan confided, "if you tell anyone that I'll kill you."

Damon hugged tighter, "if you tell anyone I hugged you, I'll kill you." It seemed like a good compromise to both brothers.

**The end.**

**Okay, I just had to write something after the finale! I heard that Julie Plec said that Damon and the others wouldn't find out about Stefan and Bonnie's respective situations until half way through season 5, so I think Stefan has the right to be very mad at all of them for being officially the worst family/friends ever. I know that Jeremy's going to say Bonnie's spending the summer with her mum but come on! Surely they'd think it was weird that Bonnie didn't mention that or that they can't contact her in any way!**

**Just saying- there better be a Salvatore brother hug after this, or at least some serious brotherly moment!**

**Sorry rant over! This story was much longer than I initially anticipated it would be.**

**Please review.**


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